A Simple Man
by LadyArinn
Summary: Jayne's outlook on everything dealing with River from the very beginning up to his sudden realization about the two of them.


Sooooo... I don't know. I guess I'm in a mood for these two. Hope you enjoy!

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Jayne leads a simple life and thinks simple thoughts, and he is in no way upset over this. He knows what he is and he accepts it, and it works out perfectly fine for him. All he needs in a place to sleep, decent coin, a body beside him whenever he gets too antsy or lonely, some food and his weapons and he's good. On Serenity, he's got that and more. He's got a bunk of his own, a better share of the jobs, plenty of leave to go whoring if he needs to, a couple of meals every day and so much room for his girls that as soon as he had got them all set up at the very beginning he'd gone out and brought back two more because he could and they looked so pretty and shiny up on his walls. So he had all of the simple pleasures he could ever want and more, so he was perfectly satisfied. There was nothing wrong or over complicated with how he lived, and that was how he liked it.

Then the girl and her brother came.

He had known from the moment she had come out of that box all naked and loopy and the smallest and frailest thing he had ever seen that it was all going to be too complicated and that they should all get out of it as soon as possible. Just kick her and her brother off and be done with the whole thing and keep living their simple, thieving lives. But they didn't listen. They didn't listen when Kaylee was shot, or when they found out about the bounties. They didn't listen when the two Core idiots had been kidnapped and then nearly burned at the stake before they could get to them and they didn't listen when the girl cut him open, eyes distant and her words evil things that followed him to sleep that night.

_Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red. Look better in red._

He'd been face to face with worse things in his life than a knife wielding girl having a crazy-tantrum, so the fact that such a thing gave him nightmares when all the rest of the things he had been faced with or done had left him sleeping easy, well… that was the last straw.

He'd sell them off, grab the coin, and everyone would thank him because it would be so much better without the trouble. They'd see, eventually, that it was so much better, the simple way they had lived before without prissy doctors and moon-brained girls.

Then he'd seen and heard what they'd done to her, and he didn't quite understand it all because he didn't have the smarts the Doc had (He wasn't stupid and he knew he wasn't; he wasn't book or doctor smart, he had a different kind of smarts that no one really acknowledged, and he was okay with that since underestimating him got those people killed) but he knew that they had cut into a child and had scrambled up her brains like it weren't nothin', and that just didn't sit right with him.

So he felt bad about trying to sell them off, especially the girl. He admitted the Doc had his uses but he was as annoying as sand in his shoe, so maybe he wasn't feeling too bad about him, but the girl is what made him turn over at night and scowl at the ceiling because it sat wrong inside of him. She was just a little thing, just a kid, and he had tried to sell her off to the people that had broken her. He had practically handed the pieces of her that she was trying to put back together and protect so desperately and let them shatter them so small that there was no way she would be able to get a grip ever again no matter what.

So after that he done little things for her, things the others wouldn't ever notice and things he hoped would make everything a bit better. He'd buy her a new thing of crayons when he saw she was running low, or some paper he saw about ready to be thrown out even though it was perfectly fine. A cookie or some other treat, and once even a hair band because he figured all that hair had to be annoying when it was hanging in her face. And he always made sure to put these things in the little nooks and crannies of the ship she frequented, the hideaways that she went to when she wanted to be a little bit farther than everyone else. She was just a kid, and he'd seen her using the things he'd left for her, so he figured that she liked them.

Then, she goes and tries to kill him and Mal and an entire _Gou cao de _bar and that fear for himself and the crew and their lives bubbles up anew. The girl is dangerous, how could she stay?

She does end up staying in a closet that doesn't do anything to make him feel better, and maybe he gets just a little itchy. But the girl is strong and they don't know how strong, and they don't know what other tricks the Alliance shoved into her so it would be best to just get rid of her. He feels bad about it, but he'd feel worse if he was dead.

But then there are reavers they have to get passed for some hair-brained plan that in no way will end well, searching for some planet that's not supposed to be in the girl's head but is. And no offense to the girl, but even an unknown threat is no match for how much the reavers terrify him.

But they get past and onto that planet, and if he thought tearing apart a person was bad, what they did to an entire planet was far worse. And the _reavers_. They had actually made the reavers in one of their sick science experiments for the "greater good".

And it was all in her head. All of it. Just shoved in there and poorly packaged, struggling to get free and tearing at her from the inside, and if he hadn't hated the Alliance by then he would have started from that moment, seething with a rage that was too hot to be contained for too long.

Then he got a chance to take it out and use it, fighting the Alliance and reavers and telling the truth so that all of the clueless morons around the verse could take notice and get angry too. But it was too much, too fast, and they lost Wash just like they had lost Book, and he was shot and Kaylee was dying and so was the Doc and Zoe was hurting but trying to hold on and Mal wasn't there and…

And the girl was running, going straight towards the death no one wanted just so that she could be some big damn hero and he watched those doors close and he watched her brother break and it was bad. It was so bad and they couldn't do anything and that girl was in there – just a little, broken girl that too much had happened to with too much wrong with her – and he hadn't ever been so scared in his entire life.

And then, it was quiet, and he had found just how much fear a man could hold inside of him.

He looked up at the opening doors and she was standing there, covered in blood all the way from her stringy hair down through her floaty little dress and down to her boots, and she was holding her two weapons like she was ready to strike if anything else dared to come at her, her eyes wide and filled with crazy, standing over the bodies of more reavers that even the strongest man could take on all at once, and she suddenly wasn't that little girl that he had always had her marked as in his mind.

Little girls didn't stand tall like that, completely uninjured after a battle most armies wouldn't have survived. Little girls didn't grip such deadly things in their hands and hold them like they were an extension of themselves. Little girls didn't run into a room filled with one of the worst evils in the entire verse and not scream even once.

Little girls didn't ready themselves to attack and defend against armored Alliance troops with guns pointed directly at their backs.

After when they were so very, very far away and once they had gotten back onto Serenity and started the painstaking healing process, he couldn't figure out how to label her. She could be the pilot, but that was still Wash and a stubborn and sore part of him felt like it always would be. She could be a weapon, but that was what the Alliance wanted her to be and he'd never go along with anything they would want, especially not when it included her. She could be their Reader, which she was, but it just couldn't settle right.

So he decided to leave it alone and not label her anything, and this worked out perfectly right up until he realized he was always watching her, months and months and months later. He was watching her and thinking about her, and he decided it was curiosity because it was always about how she'd fight, how good of a shot she'd be, just how good she was at what she was forced to be good at. So, he went and asked and somehow found himself friends with her. And maybe friends was a label he could settle on.

Since Mal still felt conflicted about giving her weapons even after seeing what she could do with them (maybe _because_ he had seen what she could do with them) they had to do it a bit secretively, going out when they landed to some field or dead-end alley so she could show him just how accurate she could be. The fought bare hand and bare feet in the loading bay with mats laid out on the ground, and after everyone's initial freak out at poor sweet River going up against the big scary Merc (which was quelled when she had landed him firmly on his back after less than a minute, getting tired of everyone's whining) everyone loved to come watch their fights, cheering if Jayne ever ended up on the ground, which was often. But he didn't get upset about it because fighting the best, even when the best wore fluffy skirts and strawberry perfume, made you better, and he was in the best fighting shape he had ever been in.

About a year in Jayne pulled out a couple of his best long range rifles and snipers when they got to this world that had a lot of rocky terrain and cliffs, and they went out to see just how good she was at this thing as well. He was watching her as she laid down in the dirt setting up, wearing another one of her ridiculous dresses and his hat which she had stolen, and he was hit with the sudden realization that she was pretty. And not just the pretty that you could say about a sparkly thing or something like that. She was really, genuinely pretty, even with her hair which was in need of a wash and the dark half-moons that forever weighed down beneath her eyes.

She turned to him after he had come to this realization, turning her head away from the sight of the gun to just beam at him, having obviously heard this thought. And then she pulled the trigger and hit the little can they had set up over a mile out without even looking, and he knew without a doubt that he was in trouble.

He started to get her things again, a suggestion from his mother after he had written her in a panic. Practical things, like a little pistol that Mal and Simon threw a fit over for a good couple of weeks, and then a few things to take care of it. She started cleaning his guns with him, taking care of hers before she moved on and helped with his, something no one else would ever be able to do. Seeing just haw happy she was and remembering the smile she had given when he had handed the weapon off to her, Jayne then went out a few weeks later and brought back a huge assault rifle that had a few pretty modifications he'd taken from one of their jobs gone wrong. She'd smiled as big as she could and had named in Robert, and Mal and Simon had practically died over that one, Inara and Kaylee actually joining in on the protest while Zoe watched on with eyes that knew a bit too much and that seemed to be laughing at him.

River ignored them though and kept Robert and Edgar (the pistol), and Jaynes gifts kept coming. He gave her the practical things like boots and a holster and a pretty little switch blade with engraving that reminded him of her just whenever, not really caring all that much if someone saw. But the other things he left in her spots just like the apology gifts a couple of years back. Things left in secret were such presents as a skirt dyed every color imaginable he'd seen while on his way to get ammo one day, or a bracelet with a charm he scared one merchant out of, the little ballerina making her smile for days after. There was nail polish and candies and things he thought she'd like, but things he knew would make the rest of the crew think he was soft. And he wasn't soft. He wasn't.

He just liked seeing her smile.

When she started to give him gifts, he was surprised. He hadn't thought this would be the kind of thing where he'd give and receive. He was nervous about that for all of a second before he saw what it was, and then he was too busy being happy to care.

There were drawings, ones she'd leave on top of his bed when he'd leave the room, breaking in even though the hatch was locked. The first was a sketch of Vera when she was taken apart, each and every piece drawn perfectly even though he knew that she hadn't seen all of them. He even takes down one of his favorite nudie pictures just so that it can have the best spot on his wall. There are a few more of the same for some of his other guns, the ones he favors more and love just a bit more than the others, and then he gets this picture of one of the most gorgeous women he had ever seen that she had drawn, and she had drawn her nude.

He recognizes the woman, because they'd had to deal with her on the past job, or more accurately her dick of a rich, counterfeiting husband. He remembers looking at her and continuing to look because she had to have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen (and he had seen a lot), but whenever River or even her brother was in the room, he was quick to avert his eyes. And for some reason, he found himself holding a very well-drawn and very naked picture of said woman.

He'd searched River out after he'd managed to gather up enough of his brains to do so, hiding the picture under his pillow because he didn't really know what to do with it. How was he supposed to take it? Was there something trying to be said?

When he'd asked her, she'd smiled her slightly loopy smile at him and had simply replied, "You thought she was beautiful, and she was, so the girl thought you would appreciate a picture. She was all too happy to participate." She leans closer, a smile in her eyes as she acts like she's about to tell a great secret. "She has a great appreciation for art and her own body. Very vain."

"So, you, uh, don't mind me lookin'?" Jayne asks, so confused he's dizzy with it because it isn't really making sense. He'd expected something different. He'd always thought that it was a rule that once you started getting kind with a girl you couldn't ever let her know you look at anyone but them. Following that rule, River was supposed to be throwing a fit, not handing him nude pictures she'd drawn herself with a smile on her face.

"No. Why would she? Everyone looks and appreciates the human form based on how attractive they find that person to be. Expecting someone to stop appreciating and to stop having eyes is stupid. Just because you see, does not mean you will take. Appreciating is not the same as cheating, and you did not want to be with her in such a way, yes?"

And that was when he realized that she was right, and it was all because of her. All of the sudden he wasn't whoring and he wasn't seeking anyone out but her, and even if someone offered he wouldn't take them up on it.

Because River? Somehow, he'd fallen for her and found himself in a relationship with her. He had no idea how it had happened, but it had, and he wasn't really all that upset about it.

He was pretty okay with it, actually.

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The Chinese I used up there was:_Gou cao de_\- Dog Fucking


End file.
